


come easeful future

by rosecannon



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Also There's Murder, Animal Death, Blow Jobs, Cherry Wine, Come Swallowing, Fix-It, Gratuitous Purple Prose, Hannibal is Hannibal, Here Be Homosexuals, Inaccuracies In The Depiction of the Fauna of the Faroe Islands, M/M, Multi, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Slow Burn, Will Graham is a stubborn little shit, a trip to the lovely land of the Faroe Islands
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-08-06 15:15:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16390109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosecannon/pseuds/rosecannon
Summary: If you die, do you become a ghost, or someone new?  If you drown, do you learn to breathe underwater?  If a place is made for you in the world, do you go there after death?  Will is learning a new life like a language in the place that's made for him, hewn and carved by hands familiar.  But as long as there exists prey, there exists predators.  As long as there are sheep wolves will hunt.This work has been given a new title!  Updates anticipated Mondays and Thursdays/Fridays.





	1. Forrættir

**FORR **ÆTTIR****

 

I have no reflection.

That man in the mirror, with his hollow eyes and the ghastly rosebloom of a wound on his cheek, that’s not me. And if that man is not me, I have no reflection. The man in the mirror is a stranger.

I know myself. I am cold blooded and pulseless. I am the risen undead, transformed. A corpse on land. Vampiric, reflectionless. I feel blood-starved and feral with hunger. I am changed.

I’m not alone. There is another here with me and the mirror-man. I can’t look at Him. Not yet. It’s too much for now. A familiar face beyond my vision. Familiar hands against white porcelain. My head swims, floats. My eyes sting. What is that smell?

I look at the floor. Tile, smooth, crack in the corner. Dark grout. My two socked feet. There’s a smell in my nose like salt air and stale smoke. Chemicals and cologne. Too much too soon. The sensory array threatens to unbalance me, and I have to steady before I fall.

Focusing on the floor is a good place to start. One space I can adapt to, one tile at a time, and then I can focus on the room, on my company. His hands move through my hair. I feel sand fall from scalp to shoulders. I thought we washed all of that out. There’s more on the tile.

One tile turns into four, which becomes the floor. The floor rises into walls, orange? Tan? Wallpapered, uneven stripes, peeling in some places.. I learn the pattern before I let myself move on. A sink. The mirror above -- but I can’t. Not the mirror just yet. The sink. Wrapped toiletries, I take inventory; One (1) bottle shampoo, one (1) bottle conditioner, two (2) bars of soap (one body, one face, both wrapped in plastic.) One (1) bottle of lotion. A plastic comb. The toilet, I’m sitting on. The lid, that is. Shower to the right. Him, slightly to the left. This is okay. All things are known to me. A known room in a place I’ve never been. A room like thousands of other rooms I’ve been in.

Now the mirror.

I look at the man in the mirror, and the man in the mirror looks back. That stranger with the dark eyes. An imperfect copy of who Will Graham was. His hair is not my hair, but the rest could be the same. The mirror-man has straw-blond locks curling around his pale face. Resting against that puckered wound. I feel my hair in the same place.

I smell dye.

I know the hands on me. I know His voice, hushed as it is. I taste blood in my mouth.

“It’s a shame, really,” he says, “you had the loveliest curls. I’ll leave what I can.”

The sight of the scissors bring me back to myself, A glint of the blades that catches my eyes just enough to return me to this body. I remember him rinsing my hair out in the sink, tsk-ing at all the sand that dirtied the porcelain. He hates a mess, after all.

“Didn’t know you knew how to cut hair. They teach you that in medical school?” My inflection is too flat, I think, but putting effort into regulating my tone is beyond me. I know he understands me. I don’t need to try with him. I run my tongue over my canines, expecting them to be sharper, for some reason.

“Ah, there’s the rub. I’ll admit. I don’t have the faintest idea of how to cut hair. But our situation calls for some modifications, and this one is easily achieved in our current position,” he says, and if I could bring my eyes up to look at his face I know I would find his upper lip curled slightly, barely there. I hear it in his voice. I can feel his smile in the tip of his fingers, in the way they touch my scalp. I watch his pale hand take the comb from the sink.

“Just like the dye? Am I going to be cutting your hair, too?” The thought actually manages to make the corner of my lip quirk. Which stings, unsurprisingly, hole in my face to be considered. Salt water in the wound. He’s already glued it closed. Glue, he said, reduces the chance of scarring. And why would he want to do that? It’s not my first scar. Nor the biggest. He stakes a claim on that.

It could be that he needs it to heal as prettily as possible to make sure I don’t have something so identifying broadcasted right there on my face. It could be that he wants to remove it from me because he wasn’t the one to put it there.

Both seem just as likely.

“My hair?” More of the sneer drips into his voice. “I think going dark was enough for me. The plan is to let it grow, actually.”

I finally manage to bring my eyes up to his face, and I remember why it was so hard to look at him. He is not Him. At least, he looks just different enough to send a little jolt to my brain. Stranger danger. All things considered, he looks good as a brunette. The box, I remember, called the shade Midnight Espresso. The dye he chose for me was Honeyed Wheat.

His hand comes up to my chin, gently lifts until I’m looking straight ahead. I hear him give the scissors a few testing little snip-snips.

“If we are to have died last night, then today we will be someone new.”

I keep my head up, but let my eyes fall again. Back to the tile. On the tile, soft blond locks start to fall into piles. Little mounds of hay. My curls. Really, I feel ridiculously sentimental. I can’t remember my last haircut. No, that’s a lie. I remember. Molly cut it then, how many months ago? Four? Five? Before Wally’s birthday party.

Sitting here with the soft sounds of the scissors fluttering around my ears and his skilled, careful hands, it feels like decades ago.

It’s worse when he starts the clippers. Too loud, makes me start before I can clench my hands in my lap. The whirring is more like a grind. They’re cheap. He only needs to use them once. They buzz lines up the nape of my neck, against my temples. A smell like hot plastic and hair. His hands come down to cup my jaw, to move my head where he needs it to be. I let my eyes flick up to the mirror long enough to watch his face. His mouth falls just slightly open over his teeth with concentration, or perhaps appreciation? Maybe even a little sadness.

Hannibal must have loved my hair. I can see that now.

When he finishes, he leans down and purses his lips, blows across the back of my neck to remove the wiry little splinters that have gathered there. It sets my skin on fire, gives me goosebumps so bad my skin feels two sizes too tight. That had to have been on purpose.

“There you are. A disguise. Perhaps we can have you pass as a college student, now, you look that much younger. Of course, we’re not done,” he says. The smirk has made its way back into his voice.

I have to give myself a pep-talk before I can drag my eyes back to that stranger in the mirror. Made even more strange. I almost protest out loud. That’s not me.

The haircut he’s given me is...inappropriately trendy. I’ve seen my students with something like this. Ridiculous. What do they call this, long on top, faded on the sides? I think my distaste must shift like a ripple through the muscles in my face, pull the corners of my mouth down a few degrees. That’s enough for him. He reaches out to fluff what’s left on the top, just enough curls for him to ruffle his long fingers through.

“It’s fashionable. And it suits you, as much as you would like to think otherwise. It was also the best I could do in these conditions without shearing you completely. I do believe you would find that even worse.”

He’s right. Because, of course.

I’m too afraid to ask what else he has planned. I’m also too exhausted to think about it. I barely blink when I smell shaving cream, when he crouches in front of me, his face suddenly in view. That little jolt again. I don’t know you, stranger danger, and then, oh. It’s Hannibal. Just a new version of Hannibal. Midnight Espresso Hannibal. It’s not just that, his eyes are very tired, his lower lip swollen and split. There’s a mottled bruise against one cheek. Apparently, I did that with my good cheek, collided as we fell. Oops.

He doesn’t ask if I’m ready, but I don’t flinch when he covers my face in cream. I’m not afraid of the razor, either. If he wanted to hurt me, he would have by now.

If he wanted to hurt me, he wouldn’t have saved me.

He’s had to have done this before, shaved someone else. I can’t fathom who or why, but the way the razor hugs my face, careful, never a cut or a scrape…if I had any blood left in my body I might find this strangely erotic. The razor kisses my Adam’s apple, swipes up in a fluid stroke over my jaw and my chin, and I twist my hands in my lap. The joints in my knuckles scream in protest. A long night spent in the cold has rusted me.

He manages to never touch the wound, not once, shaving around it like it’s not even there at all, despite the jagged edges of it, raised like the red ridge of a mountain.

He finishes his job with a cold cloth, patting, never rubbing, so as to not irritate my skin. There’s a sudden flare of familiar scent that he dabs out of a glass bottle onto his palms. I recognize the posture, the lift of the hands, letting the alcohol of the aftershave evaporate for a few moments before he places them on my now-smooth jaw. I know the smell, like soft velvet, vetiver, juniper. Citrus notes. Something vaguely metallic and sharp underneath.

“I guess there isn’t a little ship on that bottle.”

A corner of his mouth lifts. Maybe I even see some of his teeth. For him, I’d call it a smile.

I meet the eyes of the man in the mirror again. Not a stranger, not now that we’ve properly introduced ourselves. Underneath the dark curls, the scruffy little beard, that’s still me. Even now, too-blond, obnoxiously-faded, smooth-cheeked, that’s me. A me, transformed. Myself, changed.

Arisen. Reanimated. Undead. Pale, bloodless, and thirsty. Vampiric. Here, sat with the man who sired me, in the cold bathroom of this nameless motel.

Hannibal stands, cleaning the razor in the sink, the scissors and clippers. He’ll have to gather and burn all of my hair, wash the sink with bleach. Leave no trace of us, of me. Destroy the DNA. He washes his hands, raises his own eyes to his reflection. Takes the time to push a hand through his new dark hair. The twist in his lip could be either vanity or amusement. He meets my eyes, catches me watching him. When he speaks, his voice is perfectly even.

“Will,” he says, “we’re going to need your boat.”

*************

_I’m dying. I am dying. I am going to die_

_Sea above sea below it is dark are my eyes open? It’s too cold and the salt and the sting and it’s in my nose it’s under my skin I am going to — die I am going to —_

_“Breathe. Breathe for me.”_

_How do I breathe? How can I breathe? Breathe underwater? Tell me how, tell me how, I want to —_

_“Please. Please, breathe.”_

_My chest hurts too much, the whole weight of the ocean crashing down on it, waves pushing over my heart, pumping — I want to! I want to —_

_Then rough/hot on my mouth and heat comes flooding into my lungs. Out rushes the cold, I spit it out, roll to vomit the salt onto the sand. Am I alive? Have I died?_

_On my face falls hot rain. Salt rain. Tears._

_“You are alive.”_


	2. Breyð

**BREYÐ**

The first time I stand in the threshold of the house in Ytri Dalur, I half expect him to carry me across.  

He doesn’t touch me, just lets me stand there, see the foyer, lean against the door frame.  The house is old, the floorboards worn silver with centuries of bare feet. He watches me drift inside, smell the air, warmed by the thin and watery sunlight filtering in through the windows. A farmhouse, not altogether too different from my home in Wolf Trap.  

I wonder if he bought the furniture. I run my hand along the sideboard in the foyer, rap my knuckles against the polished cherry. To my right is what I’d call a sitting room the approximate size of a handkerchief.  I struggle to see him purchasing these sofas in this particular shade of chartreuse, squat and overstuffed. The walls are the same whitewash of the fireplace mantel. It’s not his typical tastes, but it’s very close to...mine.  Comfortable and sparse. Chairs made for falling into after midnight, exhausted. The kind of rugs that look best with a dog sprawled across them.

He made a place for us.

When I turn to look at him he’s already watching me, eyes crinkled at the edges the way they do when he smiles without smiling.   

“This is where I was going to bring us,” he says, pausing a moment to fold his jacket over his arm, “You, myself...and Abigail.  After a tour of Florence. A place to stay put.”

A house that’s stood waiting for a family to fill it for four years.

“She wouldn’t have been happy with the lack of trees. Not much hunting in these parts, I take it.” I’m foolishly struggling not to let him see the ache in my chest that blooms at the mention of your name.

“Ah, not much hunting, true, but plenty of fishing.”  

He glides across the floor, disappears around the staircase to what I assume is the kitchen. I take a moment look at this home he had made for us, to touch the carved stag’s horn on the mantel. I’m lying to him and I think he knows it.

He knows you would have loved it.

**************

_Too bright, too white, I squint against it.  Shut my eyes tight and it’s no better. Am I dreaming?  Have I slept?_

_There are hands on me, cold and dry and sticky-soft like latex or rubber.  Smell like iodine. Smell like juniper and vetiver. Like dark feathers. I know he’s here with me, I know those hands._

_When I can crack my eyes open again, the world spins, neon-bright and harsh.  I blink, dizzied, until his face comes into view above me and I can breathe again.  He smiles. I try, but I can’t feel my face. With a panic that’s edging into horror I realize that we’re somewhere public.  Somewhere in the distance comes an echoing that I recognize as being Two of Hearts. Stacey Q has never sounded so horrific._

_I say “where?” but I don’t know if it’s out loud or if he just sees it in my eyes.  His hands are busy elsewhere but he leans forward to rest his forehead against mine for a moment, the only way he can touch me right now._

_“I believe this is called Red Apple Drugs and Gifts.  It was the only pharmacy in the area not open twenty-four hours.  The security here, I assure you, is abysmal. Not a single interior or exterior camera.  Not even an alarm. The PIN for the keypad on the opiates cabinet was on a Post-It on the pharmacist’s workspace.”_

_There’s a tug and a pull at the skin near my collarbone, a gentle back-and-forth that I recognize as stitching.  Not my first set of stitches. I realize that I’m lying on a bench, that the cologne smell is from the half-damp, half-sea/bloodied sweater folded up under my head.  Hannibal’s changed into a lab coat, likely the lazy pharmacist’s. There’s blood on the sleeves. I’m realizing that it’s mine._

_My tongue sits too-heavy too-thick in my throat.  I’d kill for some water._

_“What happens now?”  I think that was out loud this time.  Two of Hearts has faded into I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight.  Synth thumps in my ears louder than my heartbeat. New wave hits ghosting out to an empty building._

_“You did admirably to tip the evidence in our favor.  They will see the trail of blood that leads to the cliff and spin their own stories.  Perhaps they will say that I pushed us over the edge. Perhaps they will say it was you.  At any rate, in the public eye, we are missing, presumed deceased. And so shall we become someone new and let our ghosts lay at the bottom of the ocean, hm?”_

_It’s as good a plan as any.  Maybe I try to nod, but the effort sends my sight swimming again._

_“Have you ever thought about what you would look like as a blonde?”_

*************

The kitchen is all copper pots and butcher block. This is also very clearly a place Hannibal’s touched and made his own; the appliances are state of the art, gleaming, everything a chef needs. The refrigerator was stocked when we arrived.  The meat, he promises, never wore clothing.

The kitchen table is nestled into a breakfast nook, and the view outside is all rolling green.  There are no trees, he’s explaining as he fusses with a copper kettle, because of the sheep who groomed the islands over the centuries.

I’m half-listening, half-watching his hands as he fetches honey and cream.  Outside, I trace my eyes over the torn edges of volcanic ridges and jutting mountains.  Sitting here, remembering. Tugging at a lock of honey-blond that brushes my forehead.

I let my mouth shape the unfamiliar words he taught me on the long journey across the Atlantic.  Fuglafjørður. Kambsdalur. Eysturoy.

“Here, you are never more than three miles from the ocean. I had imagined you would want to be close to the water.”

He’s not wrong. Because, of course. If I squint out the window I can catch a scrap of blue-grey low on the horizon.  

“I’ve never even heard of this place before,” I admit, tearing a strip of skin away from the rough edges of my thumbnail while the kettle starts to scream.  “But geography wasn’t my best subject. Faroes, right? Thought those fuckers were in Egypt.”

I think, just maybe, that I hear him chuckle.

He produces a cup of tea for me, and my freezing hands accept it gratefully. Of course he knows exactly how I take it by now. Strong as hell, sweet as honey.

“It has been a long journey to get us to this place,” he sighs, pouring his own tea, “I only wish that we were all here to see it.”

That sends an unfair little aching shard right into my heart. I sip my tea, roll my neck to crack it. Obvious discomfort. I’ve stopped hiding my tells from him, and he from me. The problem being that he doesn’t have any.

He sits down at the table across from me, takes a moment to look out the window himself before he turns his gaze back to me.  A migraine is starting to thump behind one of my eyes.

“I wish that, too.”

But you’ll be here soon enough.

 

*************

 

_I slumber in a dark red depth.  I cannot breathe in the liquid. In my mouth, sitting heavy on my tongue, blood._

_In my ears is the roar of waves, a growl that thumps through my chest, rattling my ribcage.  A great beast cuts through the red waters. I hear the beat of enormous wings._

_A bite.  Just one, piercing the soft flesh of my calf.  I try to cry out and pull more water into my lungs.  Taste of salt, taste of metal. Then a hundred more bites, the great red beast tearing me, a malformed mouth butchering me.  The water fills with scarlet. Am I dying? Am I dead?_

_Above me, suddenly, a shadow against the thin light of the surface.   I look up in time to see antlers. Velvet-black ink mingles with the redness, and suddenly the pain is gone.  Feathers fall through the water like air, and then I breathe._

_“You are alive.”_

**************

I’m awake with a jolt.  My shirt sticks to my chest with sweat, and a sick wave of deja vu washes over me.  The nightmares follow me even here, in this place that he made for us.

For a dizzying second I think I’m back in bed at the house in Wolf Trap, and any minute Winston or Buster or Hunter will wake up and trot over to me, tail wagging low in concern.  But I’m not there, I’m in this new space, this new room, made for me by Hannibal’s hands.

He brought me upstairs just a few hours ago, showed me my bedroom with all the smug satisfaction of a father who has gifted his child everything and anything they wanted for Christmas.  

He watched me unwrap it from the doorway, pad along over the hardwood, touch the sleek furniture.  The bedding could have been stolen directly from my bed in Wolf Trap. He’d lined up seven little picture frames with seven little portraits of my dogs along the fireplace mantel.  It’s almost ostentatious, how carefully he tailored this space for me. Like a game of his to make something pleasing for me by showing me that he’s wormed his way deep enough into my skull.

Still, it’s the thought that counts.

I hadn’t anticipated sleeping in separate bedrooms.  But then again, I wasn’t anticipating nightmares. Maybe he was.

There’s a soft glow of embers from the fireplace.  I’ve never had a bedroom with a fireplace before. Somehow he knew I would love that. Breathing in the soft smoke smell soothes me for a moment.  Out the window opposite my bed gives me a better view, widens the blue-grey scrap of sea into a silver ribbon along the horizon. A waning moon hangs low and heavy over the jutting hills.  

I’m alone, and I don’t want to be.  I don’t have to be.

I remember which room is his.  End of the hallway. Your room was going to be the one across the hall from mine.  I haven’t dared to open the door yet and see the place he made for you. It would cause an ache too deep for smoke to soothe.  

I’m trying to be quiet when I open his door but I can see that he’s already awake.  I catch the gleam of his eyes when he looks up. Smug bastard.

His bedroom is jarringly out of place in this house.  It’s Hannibal; damask, velvet. Antique furniture, silk sheets.  As if he could settle for anything less. He watches me stand there in the doorway, arms crossed over my chest, half-shivering away from the warmth of my fire.  He has a far grander fireplace of his own that I make my way over to, futilely offering my hands to the embers. Not much heat left there.

“Are you going to stop being silly and come to bed?” he asks, and his voice is rough with sleep.  I woke him up.

“I was in bed.”  I mumble, dumbly, but I’m already turning to him and he’s already pulling the covers back.  

We’ve rarely shared a bed.  I can think of maybe three occasions; a dingy hotel in Canada, in the cabin of my boat during a storm.  In the bed of a rented pick-up truck, hiding deep in the forest from the local police. All of them out of necessity rather than affection.  Tonight feels...different.

I slide in under the bedding next to him.  He’s warm, and I resist the urge to put my cold feet on his calves.  I’m acutely aware that I’m in a thin undershirt and boxers. I’m acutely aware that he’s overdressed in silk pajamas.

He doesn’t touch me, just looks at me, breathes next to me.  He’s waiting for me to speak. I grumble something about a bad dream and he nods, pulls the covers up over my shoulders.  

Neither of us speak for a long while, breathing the other’s air.  The rushing of blood in my ears remind me of crashing waves. After minutes, hours of silence, he puts his soft hand against the side of my jaw, fingertips brushing my cheek.  

I close my eyes and sleep like the dead.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn’t resist adding the next chapter! I’m so excited to be writing fic again, it’s been a while. Feedback would be more than appreciated!
> 
> Chapter Title Translation: Breyð - Bread


	3. Lambskjøt

We learn to touch each other the way one would learn language. 

The first touches were accidents, deniable.  Meaningless. 

He hands me a styrofoam cup full of gas station coffee. His fingers brush mine and every hair on the nape of my neck stands straight up. Every part of me is screaming no, no no, fight-or-flight crackling to life. Electric panic behind my eyes.  Pupils pinpricks. Heart sprinting like heavy feet on hard pavement. We’re sitting in the car, stolen plates, it’s raining outside, he would catch me if I ran, he’s going to eat me if he catches me —

But it stops. It always stops. And the next time his fingers brush mine, pushing a stained plastic menu my way at a diner, the shock is duller. 

After a hundred times, a hundred small touches, a hundred small shocks, it stops. 

He places his hand at the small of my back when he lets me go ahead of him. He lets his touch linger on mine when I hand him his suitcase. When he drives, he lays a hand on my thigh. 

I don’t say anything. And eventually, I learn to curl my fingers into his. 

I’ve learned the way our hands fit together when we walk, side by side, the way we do now. The air bites at my lungs with a freshness fierce and cold.  In front of me, laid open like a green velvet dress tossed carelessly to the floor, is the valley. The rough rock of ridges tower above, jamming cruel fingers into an infinite silver-grey sky. Small dots of white pepper the hillside, moving across the land like a school of fish, like one beast. 

“Will, the flock,” Hannibal says with a smooth sweep of the wrist, like one introducing two old friends. “Our flock, truly.  They are ours.”

He leads me down farther into the valley, closer to our new friends, waiting for my questions. I’m slightly too dumbfounded to produce any for him. 

The sheep don’t come to us, and Hannibal stops us a safe distance away, helping me climb up onto a rock outcropping. It makes a fine enough seat to just watch them, the way they move together.  It’s a cold day, a wicked wind biting my cheeks. Hannibal reaches over to tuck my scarf more firmly around my throat. 

There’s no more shock, no more electricity. Just a soft heat and the knowledge of what my mind would have said, crackling with panic, like an echo.  _ Hands around the throat, heart pounding too pressured behind the eyes, they’ll never find your heart or liver —  _

But the heat blooms instead. Spreads outward like a flower, unfurling in my chest. There are new thoughts. Electric shock replaced by embers. 

He could kiss me here. We’ve never kissed, but he’s close. His hands lingering at my throat, his dark eyes at my Adam’s apple. I’ve never kissed a man. It scares me, and he must know that. Is that why he doesn’t do it?  

I think about those first few months, the way something often throbbed behind the panic. A soft sickness that sat in my stomach. 

He’s a man. And, like the shock, I had to unlearn the repulsion. 

It is one thing to ache for a soul, for a person. An entirely new thing to long for a foreign body. Like a language. Something I could hardly understand, touching him. Taming new words around my own clumsiness. New thoughts. 

As his hands came more often to rest against my own, the more I wished they would never leave. I learned him; his knuckles, wrists. The way they felt under my palms. 

Here, entering our fifth month on the lam, I am ready to learn his lips. 

He turns away. He doesn’t kiss me. I let out a breath I was unaware of holding. A new feeling curdles, heavy and sour in my stomach. 

Disappointment. Spoiled desire. 

I had become used to his touches. But now I must learn to dull this, as I dulled the shocks. It is one thing to tolerate those touches, another to accept them willingly as they come. It is a new beast entirely to hunger for them when they do not come when I want them. 

He takes my hand again. The sour rolling in my stomach stills, stops. 

“We are shepherds now.  As Jesus was. And is it not easy to feel closer to God in this place?  Hardly touched, even by conquerors and kings. A land shaped by sheep.” He’s musing aloud, eyes to the skies, a soft curve to his mouth. A sudden flash of heat rises in my face when I realize that I’m staring. When I realize that I think he’s beautiful. 

“Owning sheep doesn’t make you Jesus, Hannibal. Or a shepherd.” 

“You never find the poetry in things,” he chides, gently. His thumb rubs circles against my knuckle.  I watch the flock, prepare to blame the cold for the red of my cheeks. 

I plan for a way to broach the subject of acquiring a dog. 

*************

The moon is waning.  Without the moonlight I can’t see that shimmering strip of the sea on the dark horizon, but it’s out there, never too far away.  Hannibal unlatches the thick-paned window and steam rises heavy in front of me. A breeze brings in air so fresh it cuts your lungs like fiberglass.   I sink deeper into the hot water, let my head lean back. 

Hannibal’s leaning against the sink nearby, a razor gliding as smooth as ice skating across his skin.  I’m just watching, at this point, soaking in bathwater so hot it’s turning me into soup. He ran me this bath, sprinkled the water with rosemary and bay oils.  Seasoning me, I joked. All I need are some carrots and onions. 

“You made me shave, you should have grown yours out,” I say, which earns me a glance in the mirror and maybe the hint of a smile.  He shaves with a straight razor, and watching him drag it up over his throat sends a thrill up my spine. It would be easy to part the skin, slice it right open --  _ I remember his hands on you and your throat, surgical precision, burst of red like a firework --  _

“Will, you are somewhere else,” he murmurs, gently, finishing the last swipe over his jaw.  I start slightly, let the memory fall away. 

“We’ve been a lot of places together,” I offer, vaguely.  I think he understands. I sound drained, even to myself. 

He’s finished with his shave, distracted by washing the rest of the cream from his now-smooth face.  His hair is growing out, the way he said he’d let it. He lets it loose to hide some of the sharper angles of his face.  I give myself a moment to admire him before I think he’ll notice. I hadn’t thought him particularly beautiful when I met him -- a froggish mouth, shrewd little glittering eyes, cheekbones poking through like the skin is stretched too tight over his skull...

Things have changed since then.  

It’s not strange to have him in the bathroom like this, with me while I’m bathing.  It wouldn’t be the first time he’s seen me naked. Our months together have led to close quarters.  This is, however, the first time I’m testing the clawfoot tub in our new home. I had no idea I would like this so much.  Something tells me that Hannibal had an inkling. 

He turns to me, and I look up at him through the steam, try to offer him a smile.  He sees through the attempt immediately. 

“Will,” he starts, slowly, as though as not to startle me, “may I wash your hair?” 

I’m thrown for a loop.

Several thoughts shuffle through my head at once -- why would he want to? Is this a romantic gesture, is this something he does, a Hannibal-ism? What am I going to do if I say yes and don’t like it -- 

“Yeah,” I say, for some reason, the sound of my own voice foreign in my ears.  It tumbles out of me.

I close my eyes, hear the scrape of a stool across the floor as he pulls it up to sit behind the tub, behind me.  He pushes my wet curls away from my face, his deft fingers drawing little circles over my scalp. He uses the same shampoo I’ve always used.  He doesn’t like it when I don’t smell like myself, I’ve noticed. He prefers me to smell like me. 

I can see him reflected in the mirror, I can watch his face as he works.  There’s the slightest furrow to his brow, the way he looks when he’s drawing or cooking or studying.  This is something he cares about doing, and that shows in the gentle movement of his hands and just how goddamn good this feels.  I’m not regretting agreeing to this.

I let him do his work, what he wanted to do.  The answer as to why he wanted to doesn’t come to me, nor does he offer anything.  My eyes slide closed. 

_ He uses my trust, my closed eyes against me.  He drags the straight razor across my throat, blood spilling out of me in great spurts, filling the bathtub -- I trusted you, I wanted you, I let you, you asked me and I let you -- _

He places his hand palm-flat on my forehead, gently pushes until I tilt my head back.  It all rinses clean, the echo of danger. I let him baptise me in bathwater, exhale a breath that I didn’t know I was holding.  His fingers pull the last of the shampoo out of my curls. 

The notion crosses my mind that perhaps he wanted to do this because...he likes to.  Because he likes me. Then again, I’ve been wrong before. 

“Thank you,” he murmurs, somewhere close behind my ear.  

“You’re welcome.”

*************

_ I am walking the path at his side. His hand is in mine.  _

_ The world smells like old blood. It is not night, but the sky is heavy black velvet. It is not night because it is never day. Bright shards of dazzling crimson light illuminate the path we walk.  The path is the world. The path, the black, the red are all that exist. Him. And me. An eternal walk on an eternal road.  _

_ Behind us, something breathes. Something looms, and when I turn to look, I make a misstep. I stumble. I fall.  _

_ He moves forward, doesn’t look back for a moment. I try to cry out, but the black night muzzles me, muffles me. He continues without me, farther and farther away from me.  _

_ The beast behind me looms closer now.  I feel hot breath against my hair.  _

_ He walks on alone.  _

*************

I’m becoming used to waking from nightmares in this house. 

My breath comes heavy for only a moment, my curls plastered to my forehead. My shirt isn’t quite as soaked as it has been for the last two weeks. 

I won’t bother Hannibal again. It feels too intrusive, still, to interrupt his sleep. Him too lovely and vulnerable with his eyes closed, face blank. The guilt would gnaw at me. 

I decide to visit you tonight instead. 

Your room is across the hall from mine.  The door pushes open silently, and I stand there for a moment, swaying back and forth.  Stimming, Hannibal would say. 

The room smells like pine.  Would you have liked that? I think you would have liked the simple bedding, smooth and white, little lace accents.  The plush armchair in the corner, the window with its view of the mountains soaring. He gave you a bookshelf full of books, biology, environmental science. Anatomy.  Psychology. Would you have gone to school here? Pre-med, he would have pushed you towards that. Pre-law, maybe. Nursing. Something with your hands, something with your mind.  A challenge. 

I feel you in this space.  I suppose he did a good job.  I can see you at the desk, just like any other college student, head in your hands.  A cup of tea that he made you in front of you, the bracelet that I would have bought you for your twentieth birthday hanging silver on your wrist.  

There’s a little statuette of a doe on your fireplace mantel.  I think you would have loved the fireplace. 

I don’t hear him come up behind me, but I feel his warmth as he moves into my space.  Glides as silently as sharks on the silvered floors. His knuckles brush mine as he moves to stand at my side.  

“More bad dreams?” he asks, not looking at me, just standing nearby, ready to accept my touch if I offer first.  

“Not as bad.  But dreams.” Admitting it lets me exhale, and I close my eyes for a moment.  I imagine you here, asking me who’s afraid of the big bad dragon. 

He nods, accepting, and I take the hand he offers.  He squeezes for a moment, then turns, pulling, leading me to his room at the end of the hall, to another night feeling his warmth next to me.  Away from the soft white pine-smell of the place he made for you. 

*************

When I dream again, sleeping next to him, I see a pale hand reach out from the dark of the velvet night on that infinite path.  It shatters the red light into pillars of white. 

He picks me up and we move forward again with the beast at our backs, together.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title translation - Lambskjøt - Mutton


	4. Høvuðsrættir

He stands, poised, as if under a spotlight.  Copper gleams around him as he rolls up his sleeves, ties the apron around his waist.  His hair has grown long enough that he’s a developed a new tic of tucking it behind his ears, both hands coming up to smooth it away from his face in one sleek motion.

He knows I’m watching, and so he is performing.  For me. His kitchen is his stage. 

His face is set as statues, so instead I watch his hands, his wrists.  Those I can read. They twist and bend as he creates. He must be able to feel my raised eyebrows from his spot in front of the stove, because he’s over-acting.  Chewing the scenery, as they say. He’s putting hay in a saute pan. I have no idea if this is part of the recipe, or if it’s for dramatic effect. He’s cooked for us before, every night since we arrived in Ytri Dalur, but somehow this is different.  This is for some unspoken special occasion. 

He’s watching-not-watching me.  Me, I’m in the most comfortable chair to have ever existed, placed in the perfect spot in the sitting room for me to be able to watch Hannibal work in the kitchen.  He knew I would put myself here, curled up with a book that I’m not really reading. 

He’s lighting the hay on fire, for whatever reason. Because, of course.  I’m not asking questions about his methods. 

“Hey, Kaspar,” I pipe at him over the top of my book.  He loves this game.

“Hello, Jake,” he replies cheerfully, watching the hay burn away serenely in its pan.  

“Do you remember our second anniversary, when we visited Brighton?  You swept me off my feet in that pub. ‘Let’s run away to the Faroe Islands and raise sheep,’ you said, do you remember that?” 

“Of course I remember, my love.  You were wearing your favorite wool sweater and I thought to myself, I shall clothe him in wool for the rest of our days.  And here we are,” he sighs, dreamily, as the flames die down in front of him. “Kaspar and Jacob Finch, the wealthiest expat farmers in all the islands.  How I ever let you convince me to take your last name, I don’t know.” 

I lean a little bit further into my book so he doesn’t catch me grinning.  I have to admit that I like this game, too. 

Kaspar and Jacob, of course, exist purely on forged paperwork.  Hannibal had them within two weeks of the ocean spitting us back out. Birth certificates, passports.  A driver’s license with a very blonde photo of me scowling at the camera. Kaspar wears glasses in his.    

We play this game during moments of silence, spinning the stories of who we’re playing as, adding layer upon layer.  Kaspar has a Philosophy degree from Cambridge. Jacob studied Animal Science at Penn State. They meet in Rio de Janeiro and, after a whirlwind six-month courtship, marry in Prague.  Kaspar has two younger brothers. Jacob has two mothers. We argued, gently, over which one of us would get to have had a traumatic childhood experience involving falling out of a ferris wheel.  Jacob won, but only after I conceded to Kaspar surviving that terrible incident with the insect pins. 

He’s smothering the smoking hay with water, and I am very contently befuddled.  At least now he’s got the kidneys out of the fridge and I can confirm that we’re not eating burnt straw for supper.  I wouldn’t dare to eat those kidneys if I hadn’t accompanied him to the butcher and watched him hand over the krona for them.  

He’s promised to never feed me anyone without my knowledge.  But there’s no telling what Kaspar might decide. We haven’t gotten to that part of his story yet.  

He lets silence slip in comfortably, distracted by straining his smoked hay-water into a saucepan.  I watch his back, and it dawns on me, what that sweetness bubbling at the corners of my mouth is. A dumb, crooked,  _ fond  _ smile.  Noticing that it’s there snatches it away from me.  

Is it possible?  For us, that we could stay this way forever?  We aren’t Kaspar and Jacob, but can we play that role?  Two people, together, cooking meals, curled in plush armchairs, wearing fond smiles...

_ I taste the blood.  I taste my blood, wear a red mask.  A hot tear cuts through the crimson, but it’s black in the moonlight -- beautiful and cruel and sweet, I’m taking you with me into forever, where you want me, where I want you --  _

The memory grips me as real and solid as seawater.  I haven’t forgotten who he is. Who we are and what we’ve done.  All I can do is hope for a little more time before his hunger takes this away from me.  Takes him away. 

Or I can find a way to make him stay.  

*************

He serves dinner with the good wine.  

“Hay-smoked pork kidney with a savora mash,” he announces, pride ringing like brass and bells in his voice.  He places a plate in front of me, and it’s art. Because, of course. 

Dinner here is so different than dinner in Baltimore.  There is warmth here where there was none to be found in the cobalt blue _ salle à manger  _ in the city brownstone.  The dining room traps the heat and light of the kitchen, coffee-and-cinnamon smelling, garlic-and-onion.  This is a place aching to be filled by a family. Recipes passed from mother to daughter to granddaughter, table straining with the weight of Christmas dinner, chairs from every room brought up to seat a half dozen too many guests.  

He sits across from me, and I think he knows I’m hurting for something by the way I’m on my second glass of wine.  I’m not sure he could identify what, exactly. I can tell he senses the dull throb of it, his eyes sharp and scrutinizing as I take a too-large gulp of tart Frederiksdal cherry.  

I had a family before.  Now I have him. I could never go back to what I had before.  Abigail and Walter and Molly are all gone, in very different ways.  Three people I can never have again. 

He drags me out of my brooding by raising his glass in a toast, clinking it gently against mine before I can say anything.  “Happy birthday, Jacob,” he says, and it’s so sudden and so contrary to my train of thought that it renders me speechless. 

I have no doubt that if I check Jacob Finch’s passport I’ll find today’s date written as the birth date.  This perfect, glorious bastard. There will be no topping this for a while. I really did think I had him with the ferris wheel incident.  I’ll allow him the gloating pleasure of a grin, but I refuse to give him a laugh. I swallow that back with more wine. 

I need the courage to make him stay with me.  I won’t allow him to deny me this. He will never give me something and take it away again.  

*************

My mouth tastes like dark cherries.  Hannibal accepted my goodnight a half hour ago, let me know that he would be upstairs shortly.  It’s been an absolutely torturous stretch of time, waiting in the dark for him. Ears trained for the creak of the stairs under his familiar gait.  The room isn’t spinning, but it is rocking slightly. The wine is the only thing making me bold enough to be laying in his bed, feeling too-exposed in my boxers and t-shirt.  

The silk sheets might as well be snow, shivering without Hannibal’s warmth next to me.  How long is he going to be downstairs? How long am I going to lay here, making a fool of myself? 

I’m so absorbed by my own chagrin that I don’t hear the door open. 

Suddenly I’m praying that he doesn’t notice me at all, that the bed suddenly swallows me up whole.  I hear him give the air a delicate sniff, then he chuckles, soft and low. Of course he can smell me, the jig is up.  Hell, I can smell me, soaked in wine like coq au vin. 

“It’s very nice of you to join me, Will.  I will be with you in just a moment.” 

My hands are shaking, so I just draw the velvet duvet up to my chin and pretend that this is a normal situation and that this is something that we do all the time.  The gentle swaying of the room becomes just a bit more violent as my head goes swimming again, watching him start to undress. There’s a sour taste building at the back of my throat, that curdled uneasiness of revulsion,  _ too much too fast slow down I don’t know how to want this --  _

I swallow it back and close my eyes, just waiting.  He slides under the covers, next to me. 

He’s not too close, but it’s warmer immediately.  I force myself to watch him as he leans back against the upholstered headboard, blinking up at him, trying to make my vision focus.  He turns on the lamp on the nightstand and coolly picks up a book. I am pleasantly bemused. 

Of course, I would have assumed that having me half-undressed in his bed might at least give him some pause.  That he might ask some questions, twist his fingers into my brain the way he loves. I wonder if he might still be playing at Kaspar.  Peering up at him, I see the crinkle at the corner of his eyes when he’s smiling-not-smiling. 

It dawns on me that he might be trying to downplay how he feels about this.  Not just amused.  _ Delighted.    _

I’m not an idiot.  I know how to touch another person, another man or not.  I steel my nerves, remember why I’m doing this. Because I need him to stay.  Because I want him to stay. Because I want to. 

It’s not very graceful or casual, the way I tuck myself up against his side, curl an arm around his waist, loose and cautious.  He’s not surprised, just lifts one of his hands away from his book and drapes his arm around my shoulders. Lets me lay my cheek against his chest.  

It’s not like I expected.  I expected the shocks to return, the screaming buzz of being in danger, of being too close, of knowing better.  Instead, I hear his heartbeat, slow and calm. His palm comes to rest between my shoulder blades, rubbing a little circle between them.  Even the echo that would normally cry danger is quiet, and finally I’m able to coax my muscles into loosening. 

This is...incredibly pleasant.  

We’re both acting like this is a normal occurrence, like I usually spend our nights with my head on his chest.  I let my eyes close and the room gently rocks to a stop. I can pick out the notes of the scent of him, this close.  Juniper. Vetiver. Lemon, no -- yuzu? Blood orange? My nose isn’t like his but I find myself breathing deep. Sharp metallic tang under the bouquet -- blood?  Metal? Ozone. 

“Did you just smell me, Will?” he asks, and his voice is spun sweet with amusement.  I’m flushing, heat prickling from jaw to hairline. I nod once, conceding, and earn myself a chuckle. 

Thoughts are creeping into my head -- things I’ve thought about before, but hurriedly stuffed back into less-often used recesses of my mind.  I’m thinking about what it might be like to sleep with him. Does he even want that? Is that something that he thinks about me, too? I’ve tried to force myself to think about it before, dull the shock, the spoiled curdled twist of my stomach…  The idea is becoming somewhat palatable. Or at least doesn’t make my chest tighten in terror the way it used to. Spending time in his bed has eased me into it considerably.

A sudden honesty overtakes me, a drunken clarity fueled by cherry wine and the scent of his skin.  I look up at him, mouth set in a grim line, squinting to clear my vision -- I want to see his face, I want him to know that I see him.  

“Promise that you’ll never leave me, Hannibal,” I spit at him, a biting growl, exposing the raw desperation thrumming in my throat.  It must surprise him; his hand stills its circles on my shoulder blades. His face is blank, serene. 

“I promise,” he starts, slowly, carefully choosing his words, “that I will never purposefully remove myself from your side.  I cannot predict the future, Will. If I am...gone, it will be because I am taken by forces beyond my control. I will never intentionally step away from you, but I may be pulled away.”

He brings his hand to my jaw, stroking a swipe over the scar on my cheek with his thumb.  I understand his answer, it’s logical. But I don’t like it, and I think he can see that on my face. 

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, and something throbs high in my chest.  I’m looking for truth in his gaze, in his voice. I think I find it there, but I’ve been lied to before, by him, many times.  I can’t afford lies, won’t allow them. 

“If you go.  If something takes you.  I’ll follow. I won’t let you be taken, not without a fight.  You’re everything that I have and I won’t allow anyone to...to pull you away..  Too much has been taken. Not you too,” I’m croaking, hoarse suddenly, a thickness I can’t swallow down rising up in my chest.  “Not you too.” 

The almost imperceptible wince he makes twists the knife in my heart. I twist my fist in the front of his shirt, drag myself up close to him.  Crawling and clawing at his clothes, feral. I need to claim him. To keep him. I hear his breath hitch in surprise. 

I kiss him.

It’s clumsy, too hard, my eyes closed, breathing through my nose.  His hand comes up to grasp the nape of my neck, pull me back just slightly.  Not away. Just adjusting, gives him room to work. Positions me so he can kiss me back properly.

It’s not what I expected it to feel like.  I don’t know what I expected it to feel like.  It’s not like fireworks on the fourth of July, like Molly.  It’s not like neat whiskey, like Margot, or pomegranate and coconut oil like Alana.  It’s Hannibal. He’s not like anyone else on the planet. It’s not like anything I’ve ever felt before, and I can’t stop.  

Something’s overtaking me, not the wine, but something snarling and clawing, some animal instinct.  This is a gnawing hunger that I’ve never felt in my life, not once. I force his mouth open with mine, lick inside until I can taste him.  He makes a noise and our bodies are pressed so close that I can feel it vibrate low through my own ribs. A moan. A purr. His mouth tastes like smoke and blood. He wants this!  He wants me -- 

Then he’s reaching up to curl both of his hands around my jaw, pull my face away. The little whine I let out is more than embarrassing. 

“Hannibal — “ I start, but he shushes me, gently. I sit up on my haunches to swipe at my mouth with the back of my hand, catch my breath, look at him. There’s two feverish little spots of scarlet high on his cheeks that I’ve never seen before, his pupils dilated to pinpricks. 

The good doctor reacts physically, after all. 

He swallows, reaches up to smooth his hair, straighten out the smooth silk of his pajamas...I can’t stop my eyes from following his hands, further down. There’s a tightness in his pants, and it causes a hot stab of hunger to shoot through my own groin to see, to know that I did that to him…

“You’re drunk,” he finally declares, which earns a noise of protest from me, a scoff. I mean, yes, I am, but does he really care about that?  “You taste very strongly of alcohol.” 

“You shouldn’t have uncorked it if you didn’t want me to drink it,” I accuse, trying very, very hard not to pounce on him again.  My mouth is aching for his. I didn’t think it would be like this, kissing him, and I don’t know what’s happening to me, what beast I’ve unleashed by being so bold.  

“If you are going to do this, I need to know…” he starts, and he’s choosing carefully again.  I’ve never seen him be so cautious with words. He shifts uncomfortably, shakes his head just a little, as if to clear it. “I need to know that it is because you truly want to. Not because you feel like you have to.  You don’t have to, Will. I would spend a forever by your side even if you never allowed me to touch you again.” 

“I -- I didn’t, before,” I confess, words tumbling from me, saying anything to let me kiss him some more.  “I didn’t know that it would be like this, feel like this, I didn’t know I could feel like this about you. Not because you’re you, Hannibal, I already knew I wanted you, but because of your body, because -- I didn’t know if I could love that too, but I do!  God. I love you,” I let it slip, test it in my own mouth, try to hear the truth in my own voice. Do I? I hadn’t considered it before, but...I do, don’t I? Is this love? It’s not like any love I’ve ever known, but I can’t find a lie in myself. Which shocks me.  I love him. I didn’t know. 

“Will,  _ please, _ ” and there’s a roughness I’ve never heard from him before.  He’s pleading. He reaches up to grab my shoulders, harder than I think he means to.  “Please. Not now, not like this. You need to think about this. I need to think about this.  Please, Will.” 

It’s so foreign, the idea of Hannibal asking me for something like this -- the look in his eyes is enough to smother the remaining fire in my belly.  Is my mouth open? I close it, quickly, swallow back the rest of the protests I had prepared. 

“I’m sorry,” I rasp, unsure what I’m even apologizing for.  

He realizes the grip he has on me, too hard, probably bruising.  He releases me, lets his hands fall into his lap, exhaling. He suddenly looks very tired, and the remaining dregs of my desire are swallowed up by an inky guilt.  I’m less drunk than I want to be now, a fever burning the wine out of my blood. My hands twist in my lap, regret ready to drape over me, great dark wings beating behind me --

“Come here.”  It’s a gentle demand, and he stretches his arms out towards me.  I obey immediately, returning to his embrace, my cheek back to its spot against his chest.  His heart is galloping considerably faster than it was before. He’s not hiding anything from me right now.  I listen to him breathe for a moment, hear him give another heaving sigh. He buries his face into my hair and I let my arm snake back around his waist.  

“You cannot fathom the way I feel about you,” he breathes into my curls, “you beautiful thing.”  

I wish I had the words, something hot that I don’t recognize prickling at my eyes.  The heat rests against my cheek for a moment before streaking down to my jaw, the hot line of a comet.  Am I crying? 

He holds me for a long time in silence before he reaches over, turns off the light.  I’m half-asleep before he whispers a goodnight, brushes his lips over my forehead. 

I sleep in his arms.  I don’t dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title translation - Høvuðsrættir - Entree


	5. Fiskasúpan

I wake up alone, arms outstretched, reaching for someone who isn’t there. How he sneaks away from me without waking me, I attribute to Hannibal being Hannibal.

I’m disoriented for a moment, blinking in the sunlight streaming in, warm sunbeams dappling cool silk sheets. The room smells like him, slightly damp and intense. He showered, too, without waking me up. Staring up at the ceiling, I remember what I did. The embarrassment has me shrinking into myself, wanting to drag myself all the way back to the States and offer myself up gift-wrapped to the nearest police station. Oh yes, please, take me back to Baltimore and lock me up, fine sirs. I got drunk and threw myself at the Chesapeake Ripper like a virgin on prom night. Ah, Freddie, so nice to see you again, would you like to hear about how I found out that I am, in fact, sexually attracted to Hannibal Lecter? Well, as it turns out, with enough cherry wine --

The smell of cooking wafts up from downstairs, through the open bedroom door. My stomach growls. He knows how to get me out of bed.

I might as well face him. If he’s going to scold me, let me down easy, tell me off, I’d rather do it and get it done with. I force myself into a shower and a clean sweater; I’m not going to let him break my heart without my hair at least being washed.

God, it really is a matter of breaking my heart, which sickens me in a new way. It’s pathetic. What I’m feeling now is closer to what I felt in high school with my first crush than what I felt with my own wife. Nervous, palm-sweating, twitching infatuation. Does he like me back? How can I get his attention? And how can I get him in bed again?

I hear him call my name up the stairs. I hesitate at the top of the landing before I can make my legs move, make them take me downstairs and into the warm morning kitchen.

He’s at the island, poised over two plates -- fried potatoes, smoked salmon, mushrooms and onions. Simpler than he normally does. Nothing made of puff pastry, even. When he hears me approach he looks up, smiles -- has his smile always been angelic? Did he always look like something carved by God’s own two hands?

“Good morning,” he chirps, and I mumble something in return, tongue heavy. I’m realizing half of the reason I feel so terrible is the hangover drumming a dull ache behind one eye. He finishes arranging our plates, comes out from behind the island to take me by the shoulders, look into my face. The eye contact stuns me, deer in the headlights. Too intense, something that makes my shoulder blades itch --

He pulls me close and presses a kiss to my cheek. Barely more than a peck, but enough to make my heart thrum hard as hummingbirds.

“Go sit down,” he says, reaches up for just a moment to brush over my cheek with his thumb. “I’ll bring you your breakfast.”

I don’t deserve this, I’m sure of that, even as I’m taking my place at the kitchen table, nestled into the breakfast nook. A plate appears in front of me, a mug of fresh coffee, a pitcher of orange juice to fill my glass. A typical breakfast with him, but the air is supercharged with some new kind of electricity. Lightning’s stuck the house and it’s my fault.

As I’m ready to start wallowing again, Hannibal appears at his seat across from me, smiling pleasantly, I think he sees that I’m about to start tipping into self-loathing again, because he touches my hand for just a moment, brushes my knuckles with his fingertips.

“We are going to have a conversation about last night, Will, I promise. But I believe we would both rather do so with a full stomach and some coffee. So please. Eat your breakfast and relax for a moment. There is time.” His eyes are amused, and I hold his gaze for a moment before I pick up my coffee and sip obediently.

Breakfast passes uneventfully after that, both of us quiet. The food is sublime, as usual. He’s also right about how I feel so much better with food in my belly. Because, of course. I take the plates away when we’re both clear, load the dishwasher. It’s our routine. He cooks, I clean up. Shockingly domestic.

While I’m rinsing out saute pans I feel him behind me, feel him place a cautious hand on my hip. There’s hesitation there. I’ve never known him to hesitate.

“We should talk, but I would prefer not to do it here. I had a surprise planned for you and I still very much intend to present it,” he says, and I feel him lean forward. Smelling me again. Almost like a nervous tic by now.

“I don’t always like your surprises,” I say, which strikes me as a dumb and ungrateful reply as soon as it leaves my mouth.

“No bodies,” he chuckles softly, “I promise.”

“Ah. As long as you promise.”

**************

I half-expected him to blindfold me for this surprise. Instead he tucks me into the car, a model that I’ve never heard of before. The Bristol Bullet, a new car that looks like a very old car. Soft-top convertible, and, sliding inside, I can’t help but think that Hannibal purchased it solely because the deep maroon of the leather interior perfectly matches the flecks in his eyes.

We don’t leave the house often, together -- we make occasional excursions to Fuglafjordur to pick up groceries. A small, beautiful town, nestled between the mountains and the sea, When night falls, it lays golden-shining on the bay like a fallen star. I lean my forehead against the window, watch velvet-green and steel-blue whip past me. We’re not driving to Fuglafjordur today, we’re going in some direction he’s never taken me before.

He cranks the heat up and I find my eyes growing heavy. I’m reminded of silent winter car-rides with my father, my head leaned against the window, watching the road fly by. I’m dozing by the time he stops and he has to place a gentle hand on my thigh to drag me out of my reverie.

“We’re here,”

He helps me, sleepy and pliant, out of the car, hand outstretched to take mine. A perfect gentleman. I blink in the sudden rush of cold air, take in my surroundings; the road ends here, in a barely-there scrap of gravel and sand for parking. Two grand sweeping juts of mountain rise on either side, like angel wings spread from one bright silvery point on the horizon. There’s a trail of sand leading between the high sloping sides, down to a beach. Hannibal leads me down this path, his hand in mine.

The ocean breathes salty as the beach opens up before us. A small cove, embraced by the mountain ridges. Waves crash against a private shore, and the sky soars infinite and achingly blue above.

We stand together in the sand, breathing. He squeezes my hand.

“This is ours,” he says, the bare hint of a smile curling his mouth, “part of the land I’ve purchased. We own this. I have plans to build a private dock here, but I couldn’t wait for that before I showed you.”

“You bought me a beach?” I ask, blinking in the clear, cold sun. It’s bold of me to assume it’s for me, I realize, but I’m dumbfounded by the gesture.

“I did indeed. This is ours, like the house is ours, like the flock is ours. Our water. Practically, a private dock gives us a means of escape at our convenience. ...emotionally, we two are very linked to the ocean, are we not? Here, we may sail, you can fish...I have plans for summer picnics.”

It’s crushingly thoughtful. Terribly romantic. I can’t stand how much I love it.

I exhale, turn away from the ocean to look at him and find him already looking at me. Gauging my reaction with a shrewd sweep of his gaze. I nod to him, confirming that yes, this is a gift that I accept. I force my mouth to set, squeeze his hand. “Can we talk now?”

He doesn’t hesitate, just pulls his hand away. “Give me a moment,” he says, “I’ll get some things from the car.”

*************  
He lays out a blanket for us to sit on, brings a bottle of heady spiced wine to fight back the cold. I imagine a mild summer on this beach, and he’s right, a picnic will be perfect. I’m tracing lines over the ocean for a dock, for a new boat. The Nola is gone, sold, another piece of evidence that we left behind us for a sweaty wad of cash from a man who didn’t ask questions.

He clears his throat, and I look at him and find him making that new face I keep seeing lately. Choosing his words carefully. Something I haven’t seen until we came here. He holds my hand in both of his own, making my heart stab and twist in new and interesting ways.

“Last night,” he starts, cautiously, testing the sounds, “I had been hoping beyond hope for...for you and I to...I was hoping that your care for me would also be expressed...physically. I had been wanting to kiss you for a very, very long time. But how could I hope for something like that? It seemed preposterous, that we might...it was foreign to me to, at that time. The attraction. Unmistakable, but foreign. A word in a language I thought myself fluent in that I had never heard before. It took some time to wrap my tongue around it.” He sighs, looks out over the ocean. His avoidance of my eyes is alien to me. “Wanting to butcher and eat you complicated my feelings quite a bit.”

I snort a laugh, look down at our hands, his smooth and mine crisscrossed with old scars. “I think you know that it’s not easy for me, either, Hannibal.”

He nods at that, and the sun turns the planes of his face harsh, cut like marble, angles and lines. “If this is to become some new facet of the relationship between you and I, I wanted to...to make sure that it was what you truly wanted. That there were ulterior motives driving you. You have to understand that while this is something I want very much, it is absolutely not something that I will require from you. I will spend a forever at your side even if you never touch me again.”

So he says. But there’s a certain tug in his voice, an undercurrent of pain. It absolutely wrings my heart out, squeezing it painfully. I put my hand over his,, just...wanting to make that stop. I never imagined seeing him in some form of pain would hurt me so badly.

We are conjoined. His pain, my pain. Stupid empathy.

It takes me just as long to choose my words, to parse the infinite slurry of half-thoughts into sentences. I start and start a few times, nothing feeling right, slowly trickling out.

“When I kissed you, it was because...I need you to stay. I gave up my life for you. I would change so many things about what happened between us. All of the lies we told, the violence. Hurting each other like two stags locking horns. Clashing again and again. Now that I have you, I never want to lose you, and I...I wanted to make that solid. Give you another reason to stay. Because I worry that something will take you from me, Your hunger, your whimsy. That you could never be satisfied with only me. With this place that you made. Because it’s not just for you, because you made it for me and Abigail. And I can imagine you tiring of me. I know you can. It’s in your nature to wander, to consume, to cut paths. Like fire…”

He’s listening intently, really listening, as if each word is a clue to some new space in my head. Some new little room he can set up in and get cozy. He rubs circles over my knuckles, hums low to voice understanding. When I finish stumbling over myself, making a mess of things, he looks up, holds my gaze.

“I would never go anywhere that you could not follow,” he states, fiercely, a truth ringing in his tone. “I have made a final choice, and my choice is you. No matter what whims take me. I will never leave you behind. I have sworn to myself to never live a life without you in it, and if you would turn from me -- if I force you to turn from me -- I could not continue to live. If I am fire, so shall I make you flame. If you cannot burn with me, I will extinguish myself.”

It’s a beautiful promise, and the way his eyes hold mine might just make me believe. He reaches up to lay his warm hand against my cold cheek, run the pad of his thumb over the scar on my jawline. This time, when I kiss him, he’s the one who tastes like wine, mulling spices blooming warm on his lips. Not a kiss of hunger or desperation, this is soft and unhurried. Gentle. An ache bubbles up from inside me, beats a throb against my chest until I let the words out --

“I love you,” I murmur, breathless against his mouth, the wind cutting between us to carry my words out to the sea. “I love you, Hannibal, I love you.”

“Will,” he rasps, both hands coming up to cradle my face, to hold me close so he can press his forehead against mine, “I love you.”

If I heard it a hundred times a day for the rest of forever, I would remember this time.

*************

  
I sleep on the drive home. He holds my hand the entire time, and I do not dream.

  
*************

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title translation - Fiskasúpan - Fish soup


	6. Kulottusteik

An echo pierces a silken evening, racing down the valley like cracks in the icy mountain sides. A trilling, high-pitched call that soars and bounces against the ranges, the emerald grass, the silver streaks of streams and rivers.

The flock ceases movements, ears raised, listening. The call comes again, sweet and clear, wordless song. The twilight rings with it, and the flock answers.

Hannibal holds me on the same outcropping of rock perched over the valley, his long coat wrapped around both of our shoulders. The two of us hunched against the cold, held spellbound by the call.

He points her out, on the opposite side of the valley; a tall figure in a cobalt blue coat, her hands cupped around her face. The source of the sound. She’s calling to the sheep, singing them her shapeless music, her voice carrying far out into the lavender dusk.

“That is Siv,” Hannibal explains, simply, his hands cupping mine to share his warmth. His breath puffs close against my ear, and I shiver. “She is kulning. Singing to the sheep. Watch the way they heed her call, our shepherdess.”

The flock is moving to meet her, dots of white pooling around her form, like a morning glory on a sea of cream. She raises a proud head, and as she moves closer to where we sit, pulling the sheep back towards the pastures surrounding our home, I catch the fierce blaze of orange hair.

She descends the velvet hillsides like a warrior queen leading a crowd of subjects, a pair of yellow rubber boots swarmed by white fleece.

Hannibal pours me another cup of strong tea from the thermos tucked between us, and Siv waves. She comes into focus as she approaches, far below our perch on the rocks. Even from here, I can see a huge grinning mouthful of perfectly white teeth. The flock moves with her, foam on an ocean wave. I offer a tentative wave back, squinting down at her pale face. She’s covered in freckles, pretty but plain. I can see the appeal, why Hannibal would have hired her to shepherd our flock. He appreciates aesthetics, and she’s very much like a Titian painting. The singing, too, the kulning, is lovely. Hannibal needs lovely things in his life, like he needs air.

“Doctor Finch!” she calls up to us, her English lilting, her voice strong and clear, “is that the missus? Ah, Mr? Is that Jacob?”

“Hi,” I call down to her, flushing slightly as my voice wavers. She and the flock are much closer now, her presence soothing them into one coalescent mass of fleece, docile and malleable. I’m suddenly realizing that she’s built like a brick shithouse; easily six feet tall, with the broad shoulders of someone who has worked hard all of her life.

“Jacob! The doctor tells me so much about you! Come down here, I have someone I would like you two to meet!” She has all the boundless energy of youth, a clarity, a sparkle. Something I often found reflected in the many facets of Abigail. Perhaps there’s another reason she’s in Hannibal’s employ.

Hannibal helps me put my coat back on properly, the thermos tucked back into my backpack. He holds my hand while we climb down from the lookout rocks, down into the valley to meet her. The flock parts like the ocean as I wade through them, round eyes looking up at us with mild panic, mollified by Siv’s presence.

I get to meet the girl herself, face-to-face, and she’s easily as tall as me, if not taller. She stands with her hands on her hips, and I can see now that the blaze of orange hair is a braid that’s laying two feet long, the very end of it brushing her lower back. Against her legs, a lamb is leaning. She offers one rough hand to me, and I take it, shake it, trying to keep my grip firm.

“‘M Siv,” she chirps, “this is Una, she’s the newest member of the flock. Would you like to hold her?”

She reaches down to haul the little lamb up into her arms, and Una lays docile in her arms. I’ve never been around sheep before, not like dogs, and her glassy eyes make my hand hesitate its reaching.

“She’s not going to bite you,” Siv chides. I realize how fucking stupid I look and lay my hand on Una’s side. She’s coarser than she looks, but she looks like a cloud. I stroke her side for a few moments before I reach up to press a cautious hand to her muzzle, and she lets me. Siv and Hannibal both just watch me for a moment, and I offer them both a genuine smile.

“She’s beautiful,” I say, and Siv takes this as confirmation that she can plop her right into my arms. I’m taken aback for just a moment, not sure how to wrap myself around her, all hooves and fleece. She settles against my chest, and I find myself rocking back and forth like someone holding a small child.

With this little life resting against me, I see why Hannibal chose this for us. I look out over the rest of the flock, one head held higher than the others, Una’s mother, I would figure. Watchful round eyes glimmering up at me.

“Thank you,” I murmur, and Siv accepts Una back from me, lets her down to amble away on unsteady, knobbly legs. Hannibal lays a hand on my lower back and smiles at our shepherdess.

“I brought Jacob to hear the kulning. It’s ethereal when it echoes through the valley, like a chorus of _landvættir_.” Hannibal’s spoiling her with flattery, and it causes Siv’s face to split into another huge white grin, her teeth horselike, too big for her face. It’s endearing, a smile that makes me smile.

“I’ll bring these ones home to pasture and be by to deliver that package you asked for from the butcher, Doctor Finch,” she says, stuffing her hands into her pockets. “Glad to meet you, Jacob! See you soon, I’m sure.”

She leads her flock up the slop, back towards home, where they’ll sleep in the calm pastures that surround our house on the hill. Hannibal takes my hand again, leads me back towards home. Siv shepherds our flock and he shepherds me.

I look up and for a moment, I see the swing of your auburn hair, your slight frame cloaked in cobalt against the endless green of the hillside. Leading the flock.

Going home.

*************

The night comes drowsily, the fire in the sitting room warming sea-chilled bones. Hannibal moves in the kitchen and I watch him, lazily, body draped over the loveseat. Half-dosing, content.

There’s a roast in the oven, filling the house with rosemary-and-thyme smells, garlic-and-onion. My stomach growls and I hear him chuckle softly. He’s leaned against the countertop, back to me, thumbing over the pages of a newspaper. I have a book spread out across my stomach, going unread again. Fiction, this time, something he recommended. An unusual volume of half-poetry, half-prose, inked in green and gold. Written in such a way that I flip it upside down every eight pages, silken ribbons as bookmarks.

My eyes are lazily tracing the outline of his shoulders, his back, thinking deep and velvety thoughts. Wondering how to move forward with him, take the next step in learning the language of touching him. Heat is stirring deep and heavy in my belly when I see him stiffen, head tilting, hands hesitating.

He’s read something he doesn’t like.

My curiosity is piqued. And then, a soft panic. I’m hoping it’s not what I think it is.

“It’s not about us, is it?” I call to him, voice coming hoarse.

“No, no. Nothing like that.” His voice is smooth, calm in the way he makes it when he’s hiding something from me. I know that tone by now, and it doesn’t fool me anymore.

I stand, stretch, pad my way over to him, into the heat and light of the golden kitchen. He doesn’t flinch as I press myself against his back, slide my hands into the front pockets of his slacks, attaching myself to him like lichen. I put my chin on his shoulder and peer down at what he’s reading.

I don’t speak Faroese, and the black-and-white image on the front page of the paper leaves me just as mystified. It’s just a shot of someone’s house, a grass roof, nestled in one of the nearby villages. I recognize one word in the headline; Nordragota, a nearby village.

“Something about this is affecting you,” I murmur against the skin of his throat, and feel him shiver against me. “Tell me. You promised not to lie to me.”

“There’s been a murder,” he states, plainly, tapping a paragraph next to the photo. “A young woman. It’s grisly. The killer removed her hands. They haven’t been found yet.”

Something beats behind me, like wings, rushing from ear to ear, a heartbeat, a thrum. The pendulum. I still myself, breathe in deeply to stop it. I don’t want to, I don’t want to know --

I want to know.

“Tell me more.”

He sighs. He doesn’t want to do this to me, I can tell, but I need to know. I need to hear. It’s a part of me, ingrained, a hunting instinct. Blood is rushing up, heating my cheeks, the tips of my ears, heart pounding harder but not faster against my ribcage.

“Translate for me. Tell me.”

He leans forward just a little more, hunched over the spread newspaper, finger tracing the lines and letters as he translates.

“Lena Aleksdóttir, age twenty, was found along the Eiðisá River, stripped of clothing and brutalized. Human teeth had torn her throat. Her hands had been removed from her body and are as-of-yet unfound. Authorities ask that anyone with information please call their local police department.”

He’s cutting out some details, but it’s enough. My eyes are closing, the thrum moving behind me. Back. Forth. Time unwinding.

_A river rushes forward. A pale body lies on the banks, toes pointed, touching cold waters. Darkness soars over a white face, arms outstretched as if to defend herself -- but there’s nothing left to reach out with. Hands hacked from body. I discard what I don’t need and take only what I do need. Her hands -- I took her because of her hands. There was something about them I wanted, needed. I tear her throat from her as she struggles, nails clawing, fingers grasping. Lines drawn over my skin by her nails, my blood loosed --_

“Will, you’re somewhere else. Come back. This is not your burden.”

His voice pulls me out of the night, and I swear the tang of blood lingers in my nostrils. Smell of sweat, of air, of fear. River rushing against my eardrums. I suck down a new breath, and bring myself back to our kitchen.

Copper pots. Butcher block. Lemon-and-soap, salt-and-pepper. Hannibal’s hair and skin, the washing machine churning away in the mud room. Warmth and heat. The night barred back by the windows, Hannibal and I caged in light.

“It couldn’t have been anyone,” I exhale, voice ragged, “there was something about her.”

Hannibal gently detaches himself from me so he can turn around, grasp me by the shoulders for a moment before his warm hands reach up to my face, cradling my jaw. “This isn’t your life anymore, Will,” he says, firmly. “You don’t have to soak yourself in this. There are killers all over this world. Including in your kitchen.”

Something dawns on me. I grab for his wrists, squeeze until I feel the bones shift under his warm skin. “You didn’t do this,” I breathe, looking into his dark eyes, where he can’t hide the truth from me. He winces.

“Will, please. I’m not so savage. This hunter has no finesse.”

I nod just slightly. That’s true. Hannibal would have had her heart stuffed with pearl onions and rosemary sprigs on the table within the day. Besides, he’s hardly been away from my side for more than an hour since Jacob’s birthday. ...knowing Hannibal, that would be more than enough time. But I put the thought down, I trust him. I believe him.

Something catches on my thoughts, the gears turning, sinking their teeth into Hannibal’s words, grinding it through. “A _hunter,_ ” I hiss, images flashing through my head -- _camouflage, rifle, stock on the shoulder, smell of gunpowder, a crack echoing through hundreds and hundreds of trees -- breathing low on dead leaves --_

“Will,” he admonishes, but he’s given me enough to move forward with. With or without him.

“You know something about this. I know you know,” my heart beats hard, tattooing my sternum with its pounding. “Take me there.”

He looks away, face tight with an unwillingness, fighting me. But he relaxes, his thumbs stroking my cheeks, exhaling through his nose. “After dinner,” he acquiesces, “it’s a lovely roast and I’d hate to waste it.”

I concede. After dinner.

**************

My mouth tastes like meat and smoke. I lean back against the luxurious leather seats of the Bristol Bullet, and the deep maroon interior wraps around me like a giant mouth swallowing me up. Hannibal is silent. The stars spin above us as the road flies by.

To the river.

*************

The scene is barely secured by tape, my boots pressing deep prints into the soft green grass sloping down to the riverbank. A little ten-by-ten square, a stamp-sized area where a young woman lost her life. The moon is waxing above us, a little more than half, curving heavy in the night sky. Starlight glimmers along the rushing waters.

A lovely place to take your last breath.

The air is sharp as bladed grass, wind whistling past my ears. The water has a scent all its own -- I doubt Lena got the time to appreciate it.

“What was she doing down here, did the paper say?” I call out to the night air. Hannibal’s behind me, waiting, huddled in his long coat against the chill. My breath crystallizes in front of me. I’m hauntingly reminded of Jack Crawford. I half expect his voice to call out to me, demand that I paint him a picture. I shudder inside my own coat, my hands frozen into gnarled claws at my side. I stuff them into my pockets.

“She was sitting on this rock. Sketching the riverbed. An art student,” Hannibal explains, and his voice starts to fade away, slowly. The velvet night swallowing me up.

_Thrum. Hum._

_I know you. I’ve seen you before, you with your beautiful, slender hands wrapped around a charcoal pencil. I watched you here, the sun beating down on you. The rush of the riverbed drowns out my footfall, the soft grass muffles me. I am hunting. You are my prey._

_I rush you like a wild cat, take you down with me. You scream so loud that I have to tear your throat out, my hands pinning your wrists so you don’t damage them. You stupid girl. How could you hurt the loveliest things about you? Stupid, stupid. My anger makes me bite, bite, bite, tear --_

I am Francis Dolarhyde. I am Hannibal Lecter. This is my design --

No. I come back to myself, Hannibal’s hand gripping my elbow, grounding me. It slides down my arm to take my hand, and I find myself panting, gasping at the night air like a fish gaping for water. The heat of his skin warms me all the way through.

“This is his first,” I rasp, swallow. My throat is sore. Too much cold, fresh air. Ice cubes sliding down my windpipe. “He won’t stop until he gets what he’s looking for. Her hands -- there was something about the hands. He’s a -- he’s a young man. He saw her somewhere, maybe even talked to her, he knew she would be here. A student at the school she was attending, or a worker somewhere she visits, a grocery store or a corner store -- “

“Will.” He cuts me off, and the firmness of his voice silences me immediately. I feel my teeth click together as my mouth shuts abruptly. “Will, this is not the FBI. This is not your burden. This is not something that you must do.”

“He’s going to kill again and you know that as well as I do!” Anger roars up in me, sets my bones alight, blazing in the chill. I’m a thousand degrees. I’m burning. My voice echoes against the riverbed, bouncing into a hundred echoes. Hannibal just looks at me for a moment, his eyes black in the moonlight.

Wetness drips from my jaw. Two tears. He reaches up, slowly, and brushes them away with his thumb.

“Let me take you home,” he murmurs, leans in to press a sweet kiss to my forehead.

And I just let him.

*************

It’s after midnight by the time we get home, and I’m gutted, exhausted, half-dead and cold-rusted. I haven’t said a word since I yelled at him, and concern rolls off of him in heavy waves, coating me like oil.

He hesitates in the foyer, delicately sniffing the air. I stop behind him, waiting, but it comes to me -- someone’s here. Someone’s crying.

Hannibal surges forward and I follow behind him, to the kitchen. Bathed in golden light at our kitchen table is Siv, her face swollen and red with tears. She’s clearly been crying for a while, her body slumped with the exhaustion that comes with hard sobbing. Her hair is wind-torn, wild and snarled. A package sits on the counter, wrapped in a butcher’s brown paper and twine.

She hiccups, pathetically, as Hannibal goes to her. He’s immediately crouched at her side, taking one of her rough hands.

“Somethin’ got Una,” she sniffles, her lower lip trembling. Her mouth and nose and eyes all scarlet with cold and crying. “A wolf or something bit her throat all out. I found her mama crying over her and it was all blood and -- “

I’m out the back door, her voice fading behind me. Out of the light and warmth of the kitchen. Back out into the night, surging along the path, the warmth of my rage shuddering along my bones. I follow some animal instinct, urging me along under the moon.

The sheep come to rest in the calm fields surrounding the house at night. I hop the fence, move towards the pale, sagging building perched on the roll of a hill; where they go to hide in a storm. There’s a panicked bleating echoing, a hundred cries.

Behind me, our home shines yellow, a floating ship on the sea.

I don’t need a flashlight with the moon hanging above. I find her soon enough.

A little broken body lies on the grass, stained dark and indigo by the night. The blood on her fleece glimmers black, her eyes staring wide and empty at me. A child, lost.

For a split second, between blinks, I see you there on the grass, your throat cut, nude and white and still.

I pick up the tiny, broken lamb. I’m taking her home.

We’ll honor every part of her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title translation - Kulottusteik - Beef steak


	7. Reyðvín

I’m shaking apart, burning up with rage. A forest fire, a thunderstorm shuddering in my chest, building in my throat.

Hannibal paces behind me, back and forth, heavy steps on a soft silver floor. He’s got me half-swaddled in a quilt, trying to keep me contained, like he can’t handle me. The purity of my anger. A righteous fury.

“Something -- “ I start, my voice thick, “something took that girl and something took our lamb and you can’t tell me it wasn’t the same something. That wasn’t a wolf, that was a -- someone’s mocking us! Someone knows we’re here and they’re toying with us -- “

“You’re jumping to conclusions that make no sense. I brought us here because we are safe, there is no one that knows that we’re here.” His voice is dark, a thundercloud moving behind me. Back and forth. Forth and back, Rumbling.

There’s blood under my fingernails.

He found me on the back porch, holding our little lamb in my arms, her throat torn, blood blackened and glistening in the lights from the kitchen. I was watching the tail lights of Siv’s car as they drew streaks of brightness down the hill, shivering. His face was tight, the way it is when I worry him, and he pulled me back into the heat and light of our home and forced me to sit in the living room, wrapped a quilt around my shaking shoulders. He took Una from me and put her...somewhere. I don’t know where. My anger has half-blinded me, vision swimming in red, tunneled. Staring at my muddy shoes.

“If you would have brought us here,” I start, my chest tight, spitting out what I know to be the truth, “if you would have brought Abigail here, he would have taken her.”

He’s silent, still behind me. I look over my shoulder at him and his face is blank, loose, but his dark eyes glimmer with a silent fury.

“You said that to hurt me. You knew what you were doing. You are lashing out at me for something that you know I cannot control, Will, and that is unfair to me and doing an unkindness to yourself.” His voice is a hiss, his hands clenched into fists at his sides, back straight. Poised like a coiled cobra. Holding himself back from striking at me.

“We have the power to stop this before it goes any further,” I choke out, standing, letting the blanket fall to the floor. “If you won’t help me, I’ll do this myself.”

I push past him to ascend the stairs, and he grabs for my wrist, just missing as I pull away from him.

I’m sleeping in my own room tonight.

**************

_I sit at our dining room table. Is it ours? The walls are cobalt blue. Leda and the Swan hangs above our fireplace._

_Before me, a fantastic spread. I recognize individual parts -- a heart. Kidneys. The air smells like lung, sharp tang of blood and smoke. Rosemary. Garlic. Fragrant, mouthwatering. In the center of the table, a grand display -- carefully crafted, perfected by skilled hands. A little lamb, limbs tied with twine, her throat torn. Silver plates glimmer in the firelight._

_Hands reach in from behind me, your hands? Pale and slender, feminine. Wine is poured into the deep glass at my place, so dark red that it’s nearly black. I drink -- a deep draught, and the liquid is so hot that it burns my throat, my stomach. Metal fills my mouth, sits heavy and coats my tongue. Blood._

_I drain the glass. The hands pour another._

_I down glass after glass after glass, and the room spins, the walls blurring. A dark liquid seeps from the wallpaper, drips from the rows and rows of herbs. Slowly staining the room red. Oozing into the floor, covering my shoes._

_My stomach burns with a bloody fire. I lift heavy eyes to the table, and find you lying there. Your throat cut, mutilated. Ribs spread open, your belly emptied. Pale and nude._

_You look up at me, Abigail Jane Hobbs, and on your wrist is the silver bracelet I would have given you for your twentieth birthday. Your blue eyes are gone. You stare at me with the dark, wide eyes of a lamb._

_Hannibal pours me another glass. And I drink._

*************

I shudder in the dark, waking up alone for the first time in a long time. My bedroom feels too-big, agoraphobic and unfamiliar, not belonging to me. My sheets are soaked, shirt clinging to me. I breathe in the darkness, struggling to catch my breath. My tongue still feels thick and heavy. I think I taste blood and quickly realize that it’s not a remnant from my nightmare. I’ve bitten my tongue while I slept.

I swallow hard, choke down the blood in my mouth as my stomach churns uneasily. There’s a desperate flutter in my chest, a tug and a pull that begs me to go to Hannibal, to lie at his side. I lash out at it, refuse it. The anger of the night bubbles back up into my throat, furrowing my brow. That’s right. I’m mad at him. He’s not listening to me.

There’s a sudden flare of juniper in my nose, velvety and green. I drag my heavy eyes to the doorway to find Hannibal standing there, his hand hesitating on the door handle, half-cloaked in darkness. He looks unsure, for the first time since I’ve known him, his brow furrowed. Concern rolls from him in waves, enough that it jars against the bristling tendrils of my empathy, like coarse wool rubbing my skin.

“Will,” he starts, and there’s something reaching in his voice, something wanting. It pulls like a leash against my heart, straining to be with him. I reach a hand to him, coaxing, accepting. He surges forward like an ocean’s wave, two strong arms wrapped around my waist, his forehead pressed against my shoulder, all the weight of him crashing down over me. It’s very briefly too much, too much of him, heat and weight and smell and feel of him, and I tense, overstimulated.

All of my anger melts down to a small and embarrassed puddle.

“You,” Hannibal murmurs, against the skin of my throat, “are a stubborn fool. Don’t you understand? I will not allow you to do to yourself what Jack Crawford had done to you. I will not let you...sicken yourself again. I brought you here to rid you of that, to end your burden to that life, why won’t you just...let me do this for you?”

I think about everything he’s done to me -- him, Hannibal, winding me up and watching me go -- but my rage has cooled, laying limp in my throat, a thick lump. This, our home here, this was the reward for enduring that, proving myself to him, forgiving him. I’ve earned it now. Haven’t I earned the opportunity to...indulge him? To spend lazy days next to him, to wander the valleys with our flocks, to sleep in his bed at night…

My resolve folds. I surrender.

“Hannibal,” I mumble into his hair, my hands curling around his very solid back to hold him against me. He squeezes me tighter, tight enough that I can feel his heartbeat thrumming against my ribs. I’m briefly embarrassed by how soaked and thin my t-shirt is.

“I love you.” He presses the words into my throat like kisses, and I shudder under his weight. “Please, Will, please. I cannot lose you to yourself. Not now. Not when I have you.”

I think back to that night, me drunk and slurring at him in his bed, spitting at him that he can’t leave me, that I can’t lose him. Everything I feel for him, everything I need from him...it occurs to me that he needs it from me, too.

He kisses me.

It’s rough and needy, harder than anything we’ve shared before, and it makes me inhale sharply through my nose, my hands lost, lifting from his back to flutter uselessly. Not sure where to touch him, but wanting more. I’m hungry for this, and my mouth moves eagerly against his, lips parting to taste more of him...he moans into my mouth. It soaks the growing flame in my belly with gasoline, igniting me.

There are cool, dry hands on my belly, up under my thin shirt, tugging, undressing me, and I raise my arms to let him, willing to follow this ache through to wherever it leads. I’m done waiting. I’ve waited for this long enough and here we are, both willing, both wanting. Wherever he’ll lead me, I’ll follow, eagerly.

I’m embarrassed by my own arousal, already half-hard, which I’m sure he can feel. He’s not slowing down, and I let my hands tangle in his long hair as he moves from my mouth to attacking my throat, leaving sucking bites along the skin that make me gasp shamefully loud. There will be marks tomorrow. One of my hands claws down to his back until I find the hem of his shirt, yanking on it uselessly, tugging it up to his shoulders. He stops his assault on my neck only long enough to help me pull it off, sitting up on his haunches. I take a moment to reposition myself, get my unwieldy legs to rest neatly on either side of his thighs so he can slot his body against mine properly. God, we’re doing this, I’m really doing this with him -- I will have him and he will have me --

His mouth comes back to my collarbone, one of his hands resting on my jaw as I pant, catching my breath. His thumb brushes over my bottom lip and I turn my face just enough to run my tongue over it, feel the ridges of the pad of his fingertip. Instinct and need driving me, turning me feral again. Some roaring animal that he’s coaxed out of me by loving me. The noise that he makes as soon as my tongue touches him is strangled, absolutely charming. It sends a warm drop of arousal go spilling down my spine.

His hips fit so snugly between my thighs. He rocks up against me, testing, and I can feel him, his hardness pressing up against mine. Him wanting me. It sends me into a half-frenzy, and I wrap my lips around his thumb to suck on it.

I have a moment to wonder about the logistics of it -- I have a basic grasp on how two men have sex, but how does it feel, how much will it hurt to have him inside me -- and I’m realizing suddenly that I want him inside me. Quite strongly. It’s a new sensation, a physical ache to be filled that I’ve never once experienced, longing for something that I’ve never felt. I know there’s lubrication involved, obviously -- preparations, but how long does that take, and what if I’m not -- clean? The idea makes me wince, I didn’t know we were going to be doing this, are we really doing this -- ?

“You,” he growls suddenly, his voice rough, his mouth hesitating somewhere around my sternum, “are thinking much too hard about something. Would you like to stop, Will?”

“No!” I rasp, my voice breaking. I flush all the way up to the tips of my ears, burning with shame at how eager and pathetic I sound. “No. No, I don’t want to stop. I want you. I’ve been wanting you, I didn’t know how to -- how to ask you for this. I love you. Hannibal, I love you…” I’d say anything to make him keep going. I release the fistful of hair I’ve been gripping, take his face in both of my hands, the way he loves to do to me, so I can look at him, make him look at me. His eyes are nearly black and undecipherable. His mouth, swollen with kissing. He’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

“I love you,” he sighs in answer, presses a very tender kiss right over my heart. “And I want very much to please you. You precious thing. You deserve the world, don’t you know that I will give it to you…?” He must feel how hard my heart is beating, his words ghosting hot air over the wet spot of his kiss, making me shiver -- I have the brief and hysterical thought that I’ve never been so aware of my nipples being hard before. His voice jolts me back as he’s leaning up to press his mouth to my jaw --

“Let me suck you off.” It comes across as less of a request and more of a demand. It’s so sudden and foreign that I let out a high-pitched giggle, bubbling with hysterical amusement. Is he serious?

“Are you serious? You...you want to do that?” The thought hadn’t crossed my mind before. That he might want to do that for me. I’d thought of a hundred ways he could use my body for his pleasure -- and how I could please him. Him doing something for me, and for only me, though…

“I very much want to do that, yes. Would you allow me to? Tell me to stop, if you’re not ready. I will stop. But, Will…” he trails off, and when I catch his eyes again he’s biting his swollen lower lip. He looks...anxious. Eager. He wants to. He really does want to.

“Yes,” I breathe out, exhale a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “Yes, I want that.”

He sees some truth in my eyes. He would stop if he didn’t. He presses one soft kiss to my mouth before he’s pulling back, sitting up so he can hook his deft fingertips into the waistband of my boxers and...remove them. Being naked in front of him is not new but it feels like a new kind of nakedness. A new layer to the concept of nudity, to lie in front of him, aroused and exposed. An ant through God’s magnifying glass. Made small by my vulnerability. He looks at me like he’s been served something delicious. Order up.

He brushes a hand against my cheek, caresses it for a moment before he’s back to kissing me -- the dip in my collarbone, my heart -- I jolt in shock as his mouth brushes over one of my nipples, his tongue lapping over it. That’s new. That’s not...something I’ve had done to me before. His mouth is so hot, and my erection is quickly becoming painful. The noise I let out would embarrass me if I could focus enough to hear myself, my head thrown back, eyes closing.

His cool hand brushes my cock and I nearly melt with the relief of being touched. I think I’m being very loud, my hips arching up to meet the touch as he wraps his deft fingers around me. I’m too far gone to care by the first stroke he gives me. Women have touched me before. I’ve touched me before. It’s never felt like the way Hannibal touches me.

I’m almost afraid of how good his mouth will feel by the time he’s finished trailing slow kisses down my chest and stomach. He leaves another sucking bite on the jut of my hipbone -- which feels so good for a moment that my eyes roll back -- and then I can feel his breath hot against my erection. I’m afraid to look but too curious not to. I manage to sliver an eye open, let my head roll to the side just in time to watch him wrap his mouth around me.

My eyes slam shut as he drags a noise out of me -- a long, drawn out Oh, a groan that I can feel buzzing in my collarbone. The heat -- _soft, slickwet -- warmwarmwarm, so fucking soft, fuck_ \-- it’s not like any mouth I’ve ever had on me. His tongue swipes over the head of my cock and I panic for a moment about how my precum tastes. He just hums in appreciation, which makes my hips jerk up. Seeking more.

By the time he starts to suck me off proper I’m already sweating, panting. He’s just a bit clumsy, which I wasn’t expecting. He even chokes, just once, attempting to take me too deep. I suddenly wonder if he’s ever done this before. Am I his first? The thought is massively reassuring, that he’s just as unsure as I am about this, that this is new for him too. It allows me to relax a bit, my hand finding his hair again, tugging just slightly to help guide him into a rhythm that’s better for me.

He’s malleable, goes along with my guidance easily, and as he works he obviously gains confidence, taking me deeper. I open both eyes, able to watch now, and I’m glad I am. He’s beautiful. I can tell how much he wanted to do this now. Him wanting me makes me want him. Me wanting him allows him to want me freely. Our desires feed into each other. An ouroboros of fiery serpents.

It’s been -- an eternity, a nanosecond -- but my orgasm is coming too soon either way. I tangle a hand in my sheets, forcing myself to keep my hips down, not to thrust up into his mouth. I think I say his name. Maybe I’ve been saying his name for a while now. “I’m going to cum,” I warn him, my voice choked, panting, but he just hums to me, his eyes flicking up to meet mine for a split second.

I cum in a rush of heat, yelling his name. Every muscle and bone in my body sings. He swallows every drop of what I give him.

I have to beg him to stop before he pulls off, swiping at his wet and swollen mouth with the back of his hand. Smiling. Smug, clearly quite pleased with himself. I must be a mess, but he looks at me like I’m a beautiful mess as he sits back, smooths his untidied hair behind his ears.

He’s still hard. I reach for him, and he lets me fumble for a moment, grabbing his erection through the satin of his pajama pants before he chuckles, taking my wrist. I make a little whine of frustration at being stopped. He just exhales, unties the waistband of his pants to ease them down on his hips, just enough to free his erection.

I’ve seen him nude before, but not hard. Color me appropriately impressed. I realize, with a rush of shame, that my mouth is watering at the sight of his cock.

He reaches his hand down to me -- to caress my face, I think, but he doesn’t. Instead he holds his palm in front of my mouth, as if offering me something to swallow.

“Spit,” he commands. I obey, spitting into his palm. The command he has over me is immediate and gripping. I am collared. Leashed to him.

He brings his spit-slicked palm to his cock, stroking himself evenly. I watch him, biting my lip, letting myself see him like this. If I weren’t pliant and malleable and glowing with the last aftershocks of my own orgasm I would be on him, feral and needing and hungry. For now, limp-limbed and satisfied, I watch.

It takes him a minute -- was he that aroused? He leans down over me, nudges the head of his cock against my belly as he strokes himself, and his skin feels hot enough to burn where it touches me. His eyes are raking over me, from the curls plastered to my forehead to where my hands are still uselessly gripping the sheets. Taking stock of every mark that he’s left on me. Seeing where he’s claimed me.

He cums faster than I was expecting -- thick, hot ropes of cum paint my stomach, and I jerk in surprise. He milks himself through it, his own eyes squeezed shut, his brow furrowed. I watch him rapturously. I wonder if he’s imagining what it would be like to fuck me. I am very sure now that I want him to fuck me.

He finishes with an exhale, spent, and leans far back on his haunches, breathing. I’ve never had anyone cum on me and I’ve quickly decided that I’m not very keen on how it feels as it cools and congeals in the hair trailing downwards from my navel.

He doesn’t speak as his eyes open, catching mine. He looks...angelic. Calm. Unkempt, but gorgeous, even as he’s tucking his cock back into his pajamas. I just watch as he takes in the mess that he’s left on my belly. What shall we do with this.

He swipes two fingers through the mess he’s made, considers them briefly before his hand comes back down to my mouth. Somehow I know what he’s asking of me. I let my lips part, and he pushes his two fingers inside. The taste that bursts on my tongue is mildly unpleasantly bitter for just a moment. I swallow.

He swallowed for me. I swallow for him. Both of us, now, inside the other. I am made his. He is made mine. More binding than a blood oath.

I waste my t-shirt to clean the rest of the mess off my stomach. He lays at my side and strokes my curls until I fall asleep.

Tonight, he sleeps in my bed, at my side. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops! I missed my Monday update. I hope the contents of this chapter make up for the wait. ;)
> 
> Chapter title translation - Reyðvín - Red wine

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a VERY long time since I've written fic for anything -- please let me know if you spot errors, this is unbeta'd! Chapters hopefully posted twice weekly. Feedback is always appreciated!


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